Retaliation: Chinese weapons will attack Trump in the trade war

BEIJING.- The rise in US tariffs against US goods approved by China last week has been described in world headlines as another challenge of military "eye for eye" dynamics. A closer look at the numbers and the moment suggests that the plan has only revealed its reputation. Their tariffs will cover $ 60 billion of US goods, less than a third of the $ 200,000 million that will be suffered by the Chinese after the same measure that was approved a few days before the government of

Donald Trump.

The Beijing announcement arrived late at night, late at night, because Trump had told him minutes ago that Twitter would not do it if he did not want to increase his suffering. Beijing has no choice but to retaliate so that the world and its people do not perceive cowardice. It is hard to believe that the head of the republic escaped such pedestrian reasoning.

The White House declared the
The US trade war and last week ruined the truce already in force, alleging an alleged breach of commitments that China denies. Beijing will tow the American attacks using the least force, because it is still based on an agreement more and more chimerical. They have failed eleven rounds of negotiations, there are no plans for the twelfth and the relationships are so degraded that they do not even believe that personal chemistry between

Xi Jinping

and Trump Oil an agreement at their meeting next month at the G20 summit in Japan.

"Everything suggests that China intends to continue negotiations, which does not mean that it is ready for large concessions or that agreement is likely, but it would be more disturbing to react with harsher penalties, "said Scott Kennedy, Sinologist at the Center for Studies. Strategic Internationals. The wind could, however, be about to change.

The official press serves as a thermometer. In the previous months of negotiations, he ended nationalism, censored diatribes against the United States, and described a horizon of collaboration. But now, the editorialists roll without flange. The first shot came from the most watched television news on public television. The presenter, with a solemn face, promised that China "will fight to the end".

"For 5000 years, what kind of battle did not we see?" He wondered. "The toolkit is ready for a complete answer," he warned.

Allusions to "trade frictions" have been replaced by those of
"trade war", while badociating the American trade offensive with the painful colonialism that exiled the country in the past and prepares the people for a long battle.

"If the United States believes that they will achieve their goals with this intimidation, they underestimate the determination of the Chinese to defend their interests," the Xinhua official news agency reported. The ultranationalist newspaper
Global Times, who was frustrated by the confinement order, has already released the drums. "It's all the country and the people who have been intimidated, and this is going to be a real people's war," thundered its editor, Hu Xijin.

Across the networks circulates a meme with the Chinese flag in the background that says: "Negotiate, of course, fight, at any time, intimidate us, or in dreams." Other people ridicule Trump as a spoiled brat and have become famous for the sign of a restaurant that charges Americans 25% more and asks all the questions at his embbady. Truce hopes have been blown up with the recent supply of Trump
which penalizes Huawei in the North American market. The measure was described by the experts as a nuclear weapon, because it attacks the multinational in which Beijing intends to attack the world's technological primacy.

The ban on US companies selling chips and semiconductors is a huge problem for the Shenzhen company. It also indicates how much Trump is ready to go: it punishes its technicians (Huawei spends one-third of its annual $ 11 million purchase of US components) and delays the expansion of 5G networks around the world.

The attack reveals that Trump is not content with tariff skirmishes to mitigate the imbalance of the trade balance, but seeks to stem the rise of China. The current war is a metaphor for those historic moments in which a declining power converges with another booming world, defined as the trap of Thucydides.

Analysts discuss weapons that China will use to counterattack. The tariff war benefits Washington for the same reason that a campaign of oppression from foreign companies would favor Beijing: the United States sold 200 000 million more to the Asian giant than the Chinese companies in the United States. Beijing is multiplying the options among giants like General Motors, Apple or Starbucks, who compare their annual balance thanks to its market. In the air, the hundred or so Boeing aircraft worth $ 10,000 million that China has ordered to satisfy Trump before the slaps are flying away.

A well-known liturgy gives rise to other, more subtle pressures: some editorials are enough to swell the sails of nationalism and the population enthusiastically to boycott. The strict conformity of the bureaucracy and the Chinese laws can also make them flow: visas, inspections of safety of work, taxes, delays of customs?

It is only in an open war that two radical measures are envisaged. Beijing could get rid of the huge US debt that makes her banker. Although its reserves have been reduced in recent years, it still retains $ 1.2 trillion. Releasing it would trigger the US economy in recession, but China would end up without the safest market value. It could also devalue the yuan to offset rising rates on its exports. But a sharp drop would also increase the price of raw materials imported by China and the country still remembers the capital flight that caused the devaluation of 2016.

Stanley Rosen, a professor of political science at the United States Institute of China at the University of South Carolina, believes Beijing will react cautiously. "They know that Trump is unpredictable and that he is surrounded by advisers wishing a counter-attack to tell him that he had already been warned that he could not trust China." ", did he declare.

Beijing faces a dilemma: continue with Confucian patience in the expectation of a utopian agreement or go to war without concessions proposed by Trump. Its decision depends not only on the health of its bilateral relations, but also on the global economy.

The keys to the conflict

419,000

Millions of dollars

That was the US trade deficit with China in 2018; Washington imported goods worth 539 billion US dollars, against 120,000 million dollars in the opposite direction

20,749

Millions of dollars

That was the US trade deficit in March, still high, but with a decline of 19.8% over the same month of last year, result of the tariff offensive

25%

Rates

In the midst of escalation, Washington has raised this month's tariffs from 10% to 25% to thousands of Chinese products; Beijing responded with the same number to US products

Trump has always considered unacceptable the extremely high deficit with the Asian giant and attributed to Beijing's unfair practices against American companies, such as technology theft.

For its part, China ensures that the United States has unleashed the trade war as a means to stop its sustainable rise as a global economic power.

The fight between the two giants has outstanding markets and is one of the main causes of the slowdown in global growth recorded last year